Chapter 23 #2
“I love them,” I say, taking out my gold hoops and putting in the earrings. “Thank you.” I rise to my tiptoes and plant a grateful kiss on his cheek.
“You brought my sister bookish earrings,” Rem drawls, coming up behind me. “Damn, I want to put the fear in you, but that might be the sweetest thing I’ve seen a boyfriend do for her. Keep it up.”
Shaking my head, I look behind my shoulder. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Not yet.” Rem pops a piece of popcorn in his mouth from the bowl in his hand. “The night’s still young.”
“It’s too early for labels.” I turn back to Davis.
“Yeah, I agree. It’s too early for labels.” Davis takes my hand. “It’s only five o’clock. Let’s see what happens by ten.”
“Oh yeah, I’m going to like him,” Rem says through a mouth full of popcorn.
It’s a short drive from Tustin to Irvine, where we’re going for dinner and a movie. It’s also where Davis lives and his company is located. He pulls up to a four-story red brick building that appears more residential than commercial.
“Where are we?”
“My place,” he says, easing the car into a subterrain garage beneath the building.
I arch one eyebrow. “I thought we were going out for dinner and a movie.”
“We are.” Mischief gleams in his expression.
The car parked, he takes my hand and guides me towards the elevators.
He swipes a keycard and pushes the roof on the row of floor options.
My hand remains in his during the short ride up.
The elevator opens to a small glass enclosed lobby that overlooks a rooftop garden.
Swiping his keycard again, he unlocks the glass door and leads me onto the roof.
Succulents, bright orange flowers bursting from their vibrant green stalks, and leafy trees in red clay pots create a romantic garden oasis. Ivy twines around a six-foot fence flanking each side of the building, serving as a barrier between the roof and the street below.
In the center of a cluster of bistro tables sits one draped in a white linen tablecloth. A bouquet of pink roses rests at the center of the snowy white covering. In the distance, several outdoor couches and chairs face a large projection screen.
“Rooftop dinner and a movie?” Smiling, I wave towards the little setup.
“Yeah. It’s outside, so we’re technically out.”
“That we are.”
He squeezes my hand, still gripped in his. “Sometimes too much peopling takes a lot, out of me and today was a lot .”
“I’m sorry.” I wince. “We could have done this a different night.”
“No way.” He pulls me close, his free hand coming to my cheek. “I asked you out, remember? This lets me keep my promise for a night out with dinner and a movie.”
“And promises are important to you.”
“Yes.” He caresses my cheek, his gaze open and adoring.
“I like that about you, but if you ever need a break or need something from me, even if it’s only space, just say. It’s okay to put your needs first, at times. As long as you communicate them… Even if it means breaking a promise.”
“If you promise to do the same. Even if you think it may hurt my feelings.” He moves his hands to my waist, pulling me flush with him.
I wrap my arms around his neck. “Deal.”
“Deal.” He bends, nuzzling my nose with his. “I may be peopled out a bit today, but please know that I want to be here with you. I want to enjoy dinner and a movie with you. I took some time after I dropped you off, before I got all this ready, to recharge my social battery.”
“At least it’s just us, so I’m the only people you need to people with.” I peer around the rooftop. “I can’t believe you reserved the roof for our date.” My face scrunches. “Oh god, I hope you didn’t have to pay a huge fee.”
“No fee. I just closed it for the night.”
“ You just closed it?”
“Yeah,” he draws out the word. “I own this building.”
“You own an entire building?” My jaw goes slack.
It’s not unknown to me that Davis has money. He’s a tech god and CEO, after all. Apps he’d invented are widely used across the financial industry. The revenue from that, and his investors, fund his company. I just didn’t think he had “owns a building” money.
He clears his throat. “Um…three.”
“You own three buildings?”
“Nan did real estate before she retired. She drilled it into me that property is a good investment.”
“Thirty-six and you own three buildings and are a sexy tech genius turned CEO.”
“You think I’m sexy?”
I make a “have you seen you” face and go on, “Am I in a billionaire romance? Oh my god, are you Christian Gray? Do you have a red room with whips and chains?” I waggle my eyebrows.
“No, but I do have a guest room full of Star Trek memorabilia, including bobbleheads of each captain.” Smirking, he guides me to the table and pulls out my chair.
“Swoon!” I fan myself and take my seat.
“Wait until you see the collection of Enterprise models.” He presses a slow kiss to my lips, one that makes me grateful that I’m already seated, thanks to its knee-wobbling impact, before he takes his chair across from me.
We settle at the table. Two place settings sit opposite the flowers. He moves the vase to the side, saying it obstructs his preferred view, and my stomach flips. With Davis, it’s the little things that pull me deeper in like with this man. Somehow, each small gesture feels huge with him.
Below the table sits a small cooler and an insulated to-go food carrier. He pulls out champagne from the cooler. Popping the bubbly, he pours us each a glass.
“This is very impressive.” I clink my glass against his and take a sip, the dry sweetness buzzes on my taste buds.
“Full disclosure, my assistant set this up,” he says, his expression is bashful.
“Your assistant.” I laugh. “I really am in a billionaire romance.”
“Nah. More like ‘a guy who’s comfortable and lucky enough to have amazing people work with him and are willing to help him out’ romance.” He opens the food containers and begins to plate our food.
“Not as catchy as billionaire romance.” I grin. “This looks amazing.” My stomach almost dances with anticipation at the mouth-watering steak, fries, and broccoli covering my plate.
“They’re rated number eight for sirloin on GF Finder,” he says, unfolding his napkin and placing it on his lap.
“Only number eight,” I mock gasp.
“But number two for steak fries.”
“Better than Fisher’s Landing? How dare you, sir.” I pick up a fry and dip it into the ketchup. “Let me be the judge of that.”
I don’t need to verbalize the results of my assessment. The happy moan that falls out of me with my first bite confirms it.
The only thing tastier than this meal is just being with Davis. Conversation flows easily from topic to topic. Our favorite places to travel. Our current streaming obsession.
We occasionally lapse into snatches of quiet, but even those are not awkward or uncomfortable.
It’s more like taking a breath. For me, I just sink into those moments, suspecting that he needs them to just let his brain be.
He’d once said that his brain is always going in social interactions, trying to decipher cues.
I won’t pretend I haven’t done a bit of googling and followed a few autistic creators on social media to help educate myself, but I know that autism is different for everyone.
“So, today was your first pickleball experience?” He breaks the silence. “Outside of dukes behaving badly, what did you think?”
“If this is your ploy to try to get me to play, I’ll warn you I don’t sweat sexy.”
He chuckles. “I doubt that.”
“This is not false modesty. I resemble a strawberry sundae left on the sidewalk on a ninety-degree day.” I aim my fork at him. “But I could be persuaded to come watch you play again.”
“Minus the duke.”
“Minus the duke.” My mouth pulls down. “You should never have been put in that situation. I should have been honest with you from the start. I’m sorry I lied.”
“We’ve already gone over this, you didn’t lie. You just didn’t tell me.”
“Which is a lie in a different outfit.” I lean back, placing the fork on the table.
“As important as promises are to you, the truth is to me. I trusted and loved two people who kept something big from me. Even if they never lied outright to me, because I never asked them what was going on—either because I trusted them or was too scared to see what was happening right in front of me—a lie is a lie no matter how you package it.”
“You not telling me about your book men, and what your ex and cousin did are two different situations, but I get it. It’s kind of like how even little promises eat away at me to not break—” His face scrunches.
“It’s funny how we both deal with the aftermath of others hurting us by trying not to emulate their behavior. ”
“Yeah.”
As much as I love stories, I’ve never had anything but a tight relationship with the truth. After Will and Lena, anxiety twisted in my stomach anytime I lied or withheld something. This is, perhaps, what has been the hardest part of this entire situation.
“I don’t want to be like them and somehow…” The hard lump in my throat steals away my ability to finish my confession.
“You’re nothing like them.” Reaching over, he takes my hand.
“Just like I’m not like my dad. Saying that doesn’t erase that fear.
But, as you told me to be okay with sometimes breaking promises, you do the same.
This whole situation is strange, and you made decisions that you thought would cause the least amount of damage.
Continuing to beat yourself up about it, especially after I’ve accepted your completely unnecessary apology, hurts us both. ”
My head tilts. “How?”
“When someone accepts your apology and you continue to apologize, you’re saying you don’t believe them. That you think I’m lying.”
“I don’t think you’re lying.”
“Good.” His mouth quirks. “Then we agree. You’re not a liar and neither am I, so no more apologizing for Owen, Lars, and the Duke of Chucklefuck.”
“Deal.” My mouth ticks up in a grateful smile.
“Deal.” He releases my hand and picks up his fork. “So, back to pickleball. You said you may be willing to come again?”
“Yeah.” I pick up my fork. “It’s amazing to watch you play. You have this catlike grace on the court. You’re so sure in all your movements and this relaxed joy radiates off you. Well, when some asshole isn’t gunning for you, that is.”
He dabs his mouth with the napkin. “It’s why I love it.
All the sports Pop encouraged me to play as a kid were all team-based.
I love them, but there’s a lot of managing myself and everyone else.
I must anticipate what my opponents want and what my teammates need.
As much as athletics gives me a structure to interact with people where I know the rules, for the most part, there’s still a level of anticipating necessary. ”
“But don’t you have to do that in pickleball, too?”
“Not completely. When I play head-to-head, it’s just me and my opponent. When I play doubles, it’s just my teammate and our opponents. It may not make sense to anyone else, but fewer people equals less pressure. It’s more manageable.”
“It must take a lot out of you to run an entire company,” I say, taking a sip of my bubbly.
“I almost didn’t start my company because of fear. I worried about what that pressure might do. As a kid, I’d get overstimulated, resulting in meltdowns and such, making foster parents see me as too much trouble. I just wanted to be like everyone else, but I wasn’t. So, I used to mask a lot.”
Several of the autistic influencers I follow talk about masking.
It’s something many of them do either consciously or unconsciously to tamp down their natural autistic tendencies.
From what they shared online, while it may offer temporary relief in a world that doesn’t embrace neurodiversity, it can have a severe impact on the autistic person.
That knowledge causes me to worry about the pressure of running a company like No Boundaries might have on Davis.
“I’d force myself past my limitations, causing burnout. Things would be foggy, impacting my ability to focus or be present. I’d have trouble speaking. Sometimes, I’d be so exhausted that I couldn’t get out of bed for days,” he says.
Reaching across the table, I thread our fingers. “Does this still happen?”
“I still do some masking, but not as much. Still, the burnout does happen from time to time. It was a major issue in high school and my first few years of college. My moms found me a therapist who has helped me establish coping strategies.”
“Such as?” I soothe my thumb in slow strokes against his hand.
“A good support system. People who know me and understand me, or at least, try to. Doing what I need to do daily to take care of myself. Like taking breaks after I’ve peopled too much.
” He squeezes our joined hands. “Also, knowing the signs and what I need to do to take care of myself. I imagine it’s similar with your celiacs? ”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “And those strategies have been helping?”
He nods. “There are days I’m wiped out. But I know if I had to do it all over again, I’d still make the same decision.”
“What you’re doing with No Boundaries is amazing,” I say, worry nipping at me. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you said you worried it would be too much. Do you still have that worry?”
“Yes.”
“And you still carry on? You could probably fade into the background and let someone else run things.”
“I could and, maybe, one day I will. But not now.” Leaning toward me, he lifts our joined hands to his lips and presses a gentle kiss on my knuckles. “I like that you worry about me.”
“It’s kind of my thing, remember?” My mouth slants into a teasing smirk.
“As long as you leave a little of that for yourself.”
“I’m working on that.”
“In the meantime, I can worry for you.” He sits back, his hand still linked with mine.
“I’d like that.”